Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“He wasn’t, but one of a tribe called the Greggycion, a wise folk judging from what little we have of their books. I believe that the beastly Rhwmanes conquered their kingdom, much as they did the one belonging to our ancestors back in the Homeland. Ristolyn always struck me as a writer worthy of much thought. I’ve read part of his Ethics of Nichomachea.”

They passed a pleasant hour discussing things that Nevyn hadn’t heard so much as mentioned in years. Although the prince talked with the eagerness of a born scholar, when it was time for Nevyn to leave, melancholy settled over Mael like a sea fog. He wasn’t a scholar, after all, but a desperate man clinging to whatever would keep him sane.

Leaving Mael’s silent room and going into the great hall was like walking into another world. Since the army was mustering, the hall was filled with lords and warbands: men shouting, men laughing, yelling for ale, and throwing jests like daggers at one another. Nevyn sat at Orivaen’s table with the king’s councillors just below the dais. As the meal was being served, Glyn came through his private door with Gweniver. When he went to the honor table, however, she left the dais and went to eat with the king’s guards and her Ricyn.

“Lady Gweniver seems to hold her nobility in contempt,” Nevyn remarked to Orivaen.

“She does. I’ve spoken to her about it ever so often, but one simply can’t argue with the god-touched.”

During the meal Nevyn watched Glyn, who seemed to have changed not at all, still as straight and gracious as ever as he smiled at a jest or listened to the conversation of his honored lords. Yet the change came clear later, when a page took Nevyn to the king’s private apartments.

Glyn was standing by the hearth. Candlelight shone and sparked on silver, gleamed on the rich colors of the hangings and carpets, and picked out the hollow shadows under his eyes. Although he insisted that Nevyn take a chair, he himself paced restlessly by the hearth as they talked. At first they exchanged little more than news and pleasantries, until slowly, a bit at a time, the regal presence wore away, and Glyn leaned wearily against the mantel, a heartsick man.

“My liege seems to honor Lady Gweniver highly,” Nevyn remarked.

“She’s worthy of honor. I’ve given her the place at the head of my guards, you see. No one will dare envy a god-touched warrior.”

There it was, the memory they would have to face.

“Does my liege still miss his brother?”

“I doubtless will every day of my life. Ah, ye gods, if only he hadn’t killed himself! We could have met now and then in secret, or perhaps I could even have recalled him someday.”

“Well, his pride wouldn’t let him wait.”

With a sigh, Glyn sat down at last.

“So many men who’ve served me have come to grief,” he said. “There’s no end in sight, either. By the gods of our people! Sometimes I think I should just let Cantrae have the wretched throne and be done with it, but then everyone who’d died for me would have died for naught. And my loyal friends—Cantrae might slaughter the lot.” He paused for a weary, twisted smile. “How many people here at court have told you that I’m going mad?”

“Several. Are you? Or are they merely mistaking sanity for madness?”

“I’d prefer to think the latter, of course. Ever since Danno died, I’ve felt besieged. I could talk to him, and if he thought I was babbling like a fool, he’d say so. Now what do I have? Flatterers, ambitious men, jackals, half of them, and if I don’t throw them enough scraps of meat, well, then, they bite. If I try to ease my mind of some dark thought, they cringe.”

“Well, my liege, their lives depend on you, after all.”

“I know. Oh, ye gods, I know that so well! I wish I’d been born a common rider. Every man in the court envies the king, but do you know whom the king envies? Gweniver’s Ricyn. I’ve never seen a happier man than Ricco, farmer’s son or not. No matter what he does, no matter what happens to him, he calls it the will of his Goddess and gets a good night’s sleep.” Glyn paused briefly. “Do you think I’m mad? Or am I just a fool?”

“The king has never been a fool, and he would be happier if he were mad.”

Glyn laughed in a way that suddenly reminded Nevyn of Prince Mael.

“Nevyn, I’d be most grateful if you’d rejoin my court. You see things from very far away. The king humbly admits that he needs you.”

Because he saw nothing but grief ahead of him, Nevyn wanted to lie and claim that the dweomer forbade him to stay. He liked all these people too much to stay aloof from their inevitable sufferings. Yet suddenly he saw that he had a role to play, that he’d deserted Glyn, Mael, and Gavra when he’d fled for his own selfish reasons.

“I’m most honored, my liege. I’ll stay and serve you as long as you have need of me.”

And so, utterly reluctantly, Nevyn received what many men would have killed to get: a position as a royal councillor with the personal favor of the king. It took him two difficult years to untangle the web of envy that his sudden elevation created, but after that time no one questioned his place. Everyone in the kingdom knew that the center of court power rested with this shabby old man with his eccentric interest in herbs, but few, of course, knew why.

And during those two years, and on into the third, the war dragged on, a sporadic thing of raids and feints.

The rain caught them a good forty miles from the main camp. A slantwise-driving storm, with a cold wind that cut through cloaks, turned the road to muck. Even though the situation was desperate, it was impossible for the horses to go at more than a walk. The one good thing about the rain, Ricyn reflected bitterly, was that it was slowing the enemy down, too. He made a point of saying so to the thirty-four men left out of the hundred fifty who’d ridden out. No one responded with more than a grunt. Ricyn rode up and down the line twice, spoke to everyone by name, yelled at the slackers and praised the few who had the least bit of spirit left. He doubted if it was doing any good. When he said as much to Gweniver, she agreed.

“The horses are in worse shape than the men,” she said. “We have to stop soon.”

“And if they catch us?”

Gweniver merely shrugged. Neither of them had the slightest idea of how far behind them the Cantrae warband was. The one thing they could count on was that they were being chased. The hard-won victory that had reduced their warband to this weary fragment was just the sort of battle that Cantrae would feel honor bound to avenge.

Close to sunset they met a pair of farmers, struggling with a cart pulled by a balky milk cow for want of a horse. In the darkening light, Ricyn could just see that the cart was full of furniture, tools, and barrels. When the warband surrounded them, the farmers looked up in blank exhaustion, as if they didn’t even care if they were slaughtered on the road.

“Where are you fleeing from?” Gweniver said.

“Rhoscarn, my lady. The dun fell yesterday, and we’re trying to get south.”

“Who razed it?”

“These men with green beasts, like, on shields.”

Ricyn swore under his breath: the Cantrae Wyvern.

“They didn’t raze the dun, you dolt!” the second farmer said. “We didn’t see any smoke, like, did we now?”

“True enough,” said the first. “All the cursed same to me. We saw a powerful lot of them on the roads, my lady.”

Gweniver pulled the warband off the road to let the weary farmers trudge past.

“What do you say to this, Ricco? We could ride to Rhoscarn and have a roof over our heads. If they’ve been there already, they won’t ride back.”

And so they rode straight into the trap. Later Ricyn was to think how cleverly it had been laid, how well Cantrae’s men had played the part of farmers, how nicely Cantrae had judged their minds. At the time he was only glad to find shelter for the horses. When they reached the dun, they found the stone wall breached in three places. Tieryn Gwardon’s body lay headless among the rubble of stone. Although there were plenty of other corpses, it was too dark by then to count them. Since this dun had been taken and burned several times before, there was no stone broch, merely a wooden roundhouse in the middle of a muddy ward.